


Island Song

by IndianSummer13



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29086914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndianSummer13/pseuds/IndianSummer13
Summary: She says she doesn’t mind that she’ll miss prom and college and the big house on figure eight. He suspects she might though, one day.Or, six months and no gold later, reality hits.
Relationships: JJ/Kiara (Outer Banks), Sarah Cameron/John B. Routledge
Comments: 16
Kudos: 37





	Island Song

**Author's Note:**

> Why aren't there more stories out there for these two? I love them so much.

She says she doesn’t mind that she’ll miss prom and college and the big house on figure eight. Her hands are in his hair, braiding it (there’s little to do in this single room with its limited tv channels) and there’s a faint smell of barbequed corn on her shirt. John B breathes her in – chipped nail polish and all.

“I don’t,” Sarah says again. “Really.”

He suspects she might though, one day.

-

They’ve never argued. Not once. You can’t count that time he thought she’d told Ward about the oxygen tanks because they weren’t together then. He didn’t know her.

But tonight, she’s lying on the bed, her back to him, and they haven’t spoken since dinner.

_“How many times do I have to tell you John B, I_ want _to be here.”_

He wants so badly to believe her. He _does_ believe her.

But he still thinks she’ll change her mind.

Eventually.

-

The piece of gold they brought with them from the Outer Banks is still in his backpack. They can afford the low cost of their motel room on the pay from the jobs they have: fishing (him) and cleaning rooms (her)

But it’s her birthday in two weeks and John B can’t afford the earrings in the window of the little jewellery shop without pawning the gold.

-

Sarah doesn’t know how else she can prove that she’s in this - with him - forever. He turned seventeen a couple days after they’d arrived in Nassau and her own birthday is right around the corner.

Nobody gets married at seventeen just to prove a point, do they?

Or, she supposes, perhaps they do.

-

Sleeping with her back to him doesn’t feel right. It makes the inside of her chest ache and her throat feel hard and dry. On the third night after their argument, she finally caves, snuggling against his chest despite the heat and the shitty excuse for a ceiling fan overhead.

“I missed you,” she tells him, wriggling impossibly closer.

“I missed you too,” he says.

They fuck – hard – and she flops down against the pillow with sweat beading across her top lip. She hopes it’s the last time John B will ever mention the life she left behind.

-

She buys beer in the store on her way home from work the following day and they drink two bottles each, wet from swimming in the ocean as the sunk sinks beyond the horizon. The sky above the beach is painted in pinks and reds and Sarah decides aloud that this is her favourite place on the island.

She’s well aware they haven’t ventured any further than Nassau, and so her frame of reference is miniscule, but neither of them say this aloud. John B kisses her and she closes her eyes as her insides pool to liquid.

He’s good at that.

At kissing her.

-

The box and the remaining money are hidden in the inner compartment of the backpack, shut away inside of the closet. It’s significantly lighter now that the gold is no longer housed there.

He’d picked flowers on his way back (admittedly from someone else’s garden, but the ones in the store were limp and bland) and they’re now seated in the plastic cup from the bathroom.

Sarah returns from work carrying a plastic bag with food containers of rice and beans and he feels guilty.

“Flowers?” she beams, crossing the room to smell them before she kisses him hello.

“A little early, but I figured it’s better than waiting until 2am,” he replies.

2am. The time she was born. She shakes her head and smiles.

-

She falls asleep with the bedside lamp on and some game show playing on the tv. He slips her shoes off and manages to wriggle the sheets so they’re covering her.

_I love you_ , he thinks, and turns down the volume.

On his way back from the bathroom, John B sets the earrings on the little table beside her and turns out the lamp.

She doesn’t stir.

-

Outside, a dog barks and the low thrum of music from the bar down the block finally ceases. He thinks of JJ and Pope and Kie. He thinks of his dad.

He thinks of Sarah’s bedroom and the cool, conditioned air.

He can’t go back.

But she can.

-

She wakes at dawn.

She always wakes at dawn these days.

Seated beside the clock radio on the little wooden table with its scratched glass surface is a plain black box. A ring-sized box.

Her heart feels like it’s beating in her throat as the sheets rustle and John B stirs awake.

“Happy birthday baby,” he mumbles sleepily, nuzzling her neck. He must tell she’s looking at the gift. “Open it.”

Sarah kisses him, brief and excited, sitting up against the dark wood of the bed’s headboard.

-

She shouldn’t be disappointed. She feels guilty that she doesn’t love the earrings, that she wishes there was a ring seated against the soft velvet inside.

Tears sting her eyes as she blinks them back, sniffing quickly.

“Thank you,” she tries, realising that the earrings are made from tiny diamonds; realising too, that they must’ve cost more money than she knows they have. “They’re beautiful.”

Her voice cracks.

-

“You don’t like them,” he says later, failing to hide the hurt.

“Of course I do.”

She can’t tell him she’d thought it was a ring. Can’t ask him where on earth he got the money to buy diamonds. And then she realises.

“Please tell me you didn’t use the gold to buy me these.” Even as she says the words she already knows the answer.

“You deserved something better than just flowers from someone else’s garden,” John B replies.

She shakes her head. “I don’t need something this extravagant.”

“You’d have accepted them if they were from Topper.”

She knows he regrets saying it – can tell by his face. But it stings all the same.

She tries not to think whether she’d be mad he’s spent the gold money if it was a ring for her left hand.

-

She wears the earrings and they don’t talk any more about it, but he regrets buying them.

“Do you think I don’t want to be here?” she asks one night while they’re lying in bed.

“No.” It’s the truth. “But I think you might change your mind.”

-

There’s a thick tension in the room whenever they’re together.

John B hates it, torn between wishing he’s more selfish with her and wishing he’s more self _less_.

He could just tell her to leave, he supposes. Force her not to give up the life she can have back on figure eight. Topper still loves her and as much as it would destroy him, at least he’d know she’d be taken care of.

Financially.

-

“You never doubt Kiara’s reasons,” she says one morning before he’s even fully awake. “She gives up opportunities too.”

“It’s different.”

“How?” Sarah presses.

It isn’t, he supposes. It’s entirely the same.

-

In Junior High, she wanted nothing more than to be crowned Homecoming Queen, Topper by her side.

She’d imagined a beautiful dress, corsage on her wrist, maybe some flowers in her hair (flowers or a tiara – that bit she’d always been undecided on)

Now, she can’t put into words how little she wants that vision. How little she wants to be like Rose, spoiled but unhappy in a big house with little love.

-

She doesn’t know how else she can get through to him.

-

She packs what little she has into the bag she usually carries groceries in. They’d brought only his backpack when they set sail in JJ’s dad’s boat – and all that had housed had been the gold. Now they don’t even have that.

She doesn’t leave a note. Can’t have him coming after her.

The sun outside is bright and unforgiving when she closes the door of the motel room behind her. There’s no breeze today and the air is hot and heavy when she breathes it in. A garbage truck crawls along the street and the sea sparkles, the brightly-coloured fishing boats bobbing gently towards the shore with their daily catch.

Sarah takes it all in and turns in the other direction.

-

She isn’t there when he finishes work. John B knows from the moment he enters that motel room that she’s gone. The purple toothbrush which has sat beside his for six months is no longer there. Neither is her hairbrush, nor the small selection of hair ties she’d bought from the little store where they buy their groceries.

_Bought_ their groceries, he supposes.

There’s no note. He’d wanted this, he reminds himself. Wanted her not to be forced into this kind of life with him. _Wants_ her to have the best.

Loves her enough to know he can’t provide it – not unless he has the gold.

-

They never talked about going to the house on Abaco. It was the reason they ran away together, and yet here they are ( _were_ ) six months later without even an attempt at crossing the channel.

There’s a small parking lot out front of the motel and out of the corner of his eye, John B sees a flash of blonde.

“Sarah!” he shouts, chest hopeful and swelling.

She turns around, but it isn’t _her_ and his heart slams downwards.

-

He goes out on the fishing boat each morning and works through the heat of the day. His skin is red-brown, burned from the sun and the salt, hair dry and stiff even after a shower.

The sheets still smell like her.

-

The house in Winding Bay is lit on timers. The security lights are a tad too bright to be welcoming and Sarah remembers, just in time, the camera on the gate.

Around the side, there’s a surveillance blind spot (a discovery of Rafe’s when he was a little younger than she is now) She climbs the fence, struggling with the agility that comes so easily to John B, and uses the cover of the palms to make it to the house undetected.

She’d expected her father to have changed the entry code.

He hasn’t.

-

There are two safes: one in the main office; one in the pool house. She knows that even together, they’re not large enough to house all of the gold.

They can come back though, she decides. Together.

They can find the rest.

They’ve done it before, after all.

-

The bars clank together. She takes off her shirt to muffle the sound but the bag is heavy and each time she takes a step it bangs against her leg.

She’ll have a bruise by the time she makes it back.

Worth it, Sarah decides.

-

It’s been nearly two weeks. It feels like longer.

He’s worked every day because actually, that relief he’d expected to feel once she returned to the security of figure eight hasn’t come.

He misses her in a way that physically hurts; wants nothing more than to come back after a day on the boat to find her sitting on the bed painting her toenails.

John B hauls up the final net – a different physical pain yanking across his shoulders - and the captain steers the boat back towards the shore.

There’s a wall by the jetty and when he glances up, he’s almost tricked into thinking he sees her. (But that’s happened before – too many times for him to count – and he’s not falling for it again)

And then, breathless –

“I got it,” she’s telling him – he thinks, but it’s hard to take it in because she’s _actually here_. “The gold – I got it.”

“I thought-” _He’s so fucking stupid_.

So. _Fucking._ Stupid.

-

Her skin is warm and soft. So soft that it feels like silk against his cracked lips as he kisses her.

He can’t _stop_ kissing her.

“You were trying to push me away,” she says, voice wavering.

He wipes her tears with the pad of his thumb and kisses her eyelids. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to trap you.”

“I willingly got on that boat and drove with you into the storm,” she says. “Nothing about any of this makes me feel trapped.”

Later, he winces slightly, his back protesting at their earlier activities.

“C’m here.” Her voice is soft. Her deft fingers soothe the knots in his muscles, her mouth pressing warm kisses between his shoulder blades.

He falls asleep with her half on top of him, cheek pressed against his chest.

Her hair smells, as always, like coconut.

-

They trade in the gold the next day.

He puts a ring on her finger the day after that.

-

JJ, Kie and Pope’s shares are packed neatly into piles which she secures with hair ties. The rest they put together for somewhere more permanent and comfortable than the motel room.

They find a little house set back from a quiet beach on the south west of the island. It’s verging on the side of ‘fixer-upper’ but there’s a small grassed backyard and there’s something about it that makes her _just know_.

They pay in cash and move in a month later.

-

John B teaches her how to use a power drill. They renovate the house until every square inch is their work; their choice of colour, of tiles, of wooden shelving to house what little they own.

She learns to cook – properly cook – in their kitchen, making salads and grilling fish that her fiancé wolfs down appreciatively.

And she thinks, sometimes, that it might be nice to have other people to cook for. _Smaller_ people.

People who are half her and half John B.

-

A dog shows up one day. Sarah feeds him with some leftover chicken from the previous night’s dinner and he doesn’t go away.

He sleeps on their porch for a couple of nights and then a storm hits. 

It’s John B who takes pity on him, leaving their bed to let the dog inside, towelling him off so he won’t drip on the rug in the living room.

They name him Sam.

He sleeps in their bedroom now.

-

It’s JJ who visits first, sleeping in their guest room for a couple nights, and then a couple nights more until he’s practically installed himself as a permanent fixture.

Sarah says she doesn’t mind – just cooks extra food that always gets eaten – and watches them run to the sea like little boys when the waves are big enough for what JJ calls a _decent surf_.

Sam waits with her, keeping her company beside the large rock she prefers to watch them from. 

Over dinner, JJ tells them about kissing Kie. About betraying Pope.

Neither John B nor Sarah says anything.

They refuse to be hypocrites.

-

Kie arrives a month or so after JJ. The house only has two bedrooms so she takes the couch.

One night, while he’s grabbing a glass of water, John B sees that the couch is empty, and he just _knows._

-

It’s nearly two weeks after that when Pope shows up at their door. They all go to a little restaurant in town, one that sits close enough to the beach that the floor is pretty much covered in a thin veil of sand.

They order lobster and JJ (it’s always JJ) orders champagne. It’s the most lavish they’ve been since pawning the gold (the most lavish _he’s_ been, ever) but they can afford it.

It’s a comfortable feeling.

-

The Pogues leave at the same time. They’ve imposed long enough, Kie says, and the boys follow her lead, each taking their share of the gold money.

JJ damn near blows all of his on an apartment that’s way fancier than it needs to be, and John B laughs that the building’s management will kick him out within the year.

Kie and Pope are more sensible, each opting for a small neighbourhood house five minutes from the beach.

It’s quiet now, but they make good use of their privacy.

So much so, on a day when it rains and rains and rains, the pregnancy test Sarah buys shows a two blue lines.

-

Pregnancy in the Bahamian humidity is unforgiving. John B massages her feet every night so her ankles aren’t quite so swollen; carries all the groceries so she won’t hurt her back; talks to her stomach while they’re laid in bed – increasingly earlier because she’s _so freaking tired_.

He suggests names into the air randomly; is utterly _obsessed_ with her changing shape and will. not. stop. kissing. her.

He can’t stop doing _other_ things either.

-

Their son is born in June; their daughter a little over a year later.

Both of them look like her.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always greatly appreciated.


End file.
